They Found Her in a Field
2019 · 6m · UK
Directed by Ellie Rogers
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
Haunted by the death of her classmate, Martha returns ten years later to their old meeting place and must confront the tragic mystery that ended their relationship as memories come flooding back.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The unplanned snow sounds like a happy accident that Rogers *almost* lets work, but the cyclical trauma narrative feels too tidy—like she found the metaphor and stopped looking for the weirder story underneath.
Shot on 35mm with genuine formal rigor, this film situates itself deliberately in the lineage of British pastoral-as-interior-landscape, and the accidental snowfall becomes a controlled compositional tool rather than a gimmick.
The decision to let unplanned weather become part of the emotional grammar—neither fighting it nor over-explaining it—is what makes this work; that restraint, that trust in the image's ambiguity, is the lift.
Reviews
A haunting short about the cyclical nature of trauma that follows a young woman returning to an old meeting place ten years after a classmate's tragic death.
A short thriller about revisiting places of trauma and the regulation of emotion that brings.
Festivals
- BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2019, World Premiere
- Raindance Film Festival 2019
- Leeds International Film Festival 2019, Nominated — Best Queer Short Film
- Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2019, Hijack Visionary Filmmaker Award